


Caldera

by amonitrate



Series: The Gifted and the Damned [2]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Albert is not a fucking shrink okay, Angst, Blue Rose cases always end well, Foreshadowing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Season/Series 02, probably heavier on the H than the C
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 21:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12690750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/amonitrate
Summary: Blue Rose cases had a way of going wrong, fast, and hell if Albert was going to let this one get away from him.Albert navigates the fallout of the Palmer case in the three days betweenArbitrary LawandDispute Between Brothers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank yous to Triumphof for beta reading and babe_without_the_arms for discussions of Albert and Gordon.
> 
> Jump to End Notes for content warnings, some warnings are vaguely spoilery for the story. 
> 
> Please feel free to message me to ask about specific triggers before reading!

There was nothing Albert hated more than being an official, on-the-record witness in a fucking Blue Rose case.

Sure, Palmer had confessed, but they hadn’t gotten anything signed or on tape and that meant witness interviews. At least all the witnesses this time were law enforcement. The only problem? He was one of them.

Albert figured the best way to put off your own witness interview was to appoint yourself the interviewer. Maybe he’d even be able to duck out of his interrogation if there were three other solid narratives of Palmer’s confession on the record. Cole wouldn’t like it, but Cole wasn’t here. Cooper wouldn’t like it either, but so far Coop hadn’t caught on to Albert’s strategy and Albert was doing his level best to keep it that way.

There were too many questions he didn’t want to look too closely at right now, foremost being exactly when Cooper’s occasional unnerving prophetic utterances had morphed into visitations from Jupiter. He’d mentioned a giant before, but between getting plugged and how loopy he got under anesthetic, Albert had chalked the giant up to fever dreams. Which had apparently been a big mistake on his part.

He should be on the phone with Cole insisting on a psych evaluation and pulling Cooper from the field. Except that little shamanistic floor show had somehow led Coop to Palmer, and Palmer had confessed, and Cole had a bad habit of encouraging this kind of shit in Cooper because more often than not it got him results.

But Albert wasn’t too sure that fingering the killer ruled out the need for an urgent psych consult. Hell, after what he’d seen, Albert wasn’t too sure he didn’t need to talk to a shrink himself. If Bureau shrinks were even cleared for Blue Rose cases.

Albert doubted it.

 

In the car on the way back to the sheriff’s station after their momentary reprieve from hell -- changing into dry clothes at the Great Northern -- Coop had gone a little sideways on him.

They’d fallen into a silence punctuated by the rhythmic thump of rubber on tarmac when in the periphery of Albert’s vision Cooper’s head had slumped back and then rolled towards his shoulder, momentarily limp, and then his whole body had snapped forward and he was gasping, hands flailing, gripping the passenger door and the dashboard as if to stop himself from flying off the surface of the earth.

Albert had stomped on the brakes without checking to see if anyone was behind him, then cursed in relief to find they were alone on the road. He’d pulled to the shoulder and jerked on the parking brake, his heart scrambling up his throat.

“Hey,” he’d said, watching Cooper rebound against the sudden embrace of the seat belt. “You with me?”

Cooper had swallowed and nodded but it was too vague, a reflex response. When Albert touched his shoulder he whirled around, hands coming up, and Albert had backed off as far as he could in the confines of the car.

“Hey,” he’d said again, forcing calm. Waiting. Cooper hadn’t gone for his weapon, that was good.

“Albert.” His hands had fallen into his lap. They’d been vibrating, minute spasms running through the fingers, while he blinked down at them like they belonged to someone else.

“I think you nodded off,” Albert had said. Careful. “When was the last time you slept?” He’d asked this before, back at the hotel, and Cooper had managed to avoid answering. This time he’d shaken his head like maybe he didn’t know.

“Before the Ferguson girl was found?” Albert guessed.

“There was…” Cooper trailed off. “A warning. He warned me.”

A trickle like cold water ran down Albert’s back. “Who warned you? About what?”

“At the roadhouse,” Coop’s voice was a faded, wavering radio signal. “Owls at the roadhouse. He gave me my ring back but it was too late.”

“Your ring?” This was familiar, the ring, but he couldn’t fucking remember why. “Who--”

“The giant.”

Fuck. “Cooper, look at me.”

Then Coop had seemed to shake it off, whatever it was. “A couple of days. It’s been a couple of days since I last slept, Albert. Maybe three days.”

Albert’s skin had crawled the way it had when Palmer leered at them in the interrogation room, something else peering through his eyes. “Alright. Okay. And when’d you last eat?”

Cooper curled his hands into fists to control the quivering. Didn’t answer.

“Right. We’re stopping for something before we get to the Sheriff’s.”

Coop had blanched. “Albert--”

“The other option is I turn the fucking car around.”

Then Cooper had met his eyes for the first time since nearly giving him a heart attack. Nodded. And when Albert handed him a to-go cup and a bag holding a day old donut from the first gas station they came across, he’d just sipped the coffee and grimaced at the taste of the five packets of sugar Albert had dumped in and didn’t say a word. Didn’t touch the paper bag where it sat on his lap, either. Albert let it go.

 

Albert knew Cole kept him around because he was a skeptic. Sure, his forensics were top notch, but Cole seemed to see his insistence on not buying into every mumbo jumbo leap of logic and ghost story as an asset, because when the weird shit did go down, he was the one to rule out the more mundane explanations, the one they leaned on to corral the cold hard facts into some kind of sense for the normies.

That was his job and if half the time it meant making sure Dale Cooper didn’t lean too far over the ledge of concrete reality, he tried not to resent it. Helped that most of their cases weren’t the Blue Rose variety, that most of the time Cooper’s intuition was just that -- intuition. Intuition Albert could deal with. All of the best investigators trusted it and Albert was no different. Intuition was what made you look twice at a piece of evidence that seemed irrelevant. Intuition told you something was missing when you thought you had a case locked. When used right, in fucking moderation, intuition got you results.

Ring stealing giants and homicidal possessing spirits were a whole other ant farm.

What they’d seen, Palmer gnashing his teeth in that cell, talking about himself in the third person… a part of Albert still wanted to insist it was a case of townie gone feral. So after their unofficial debriefing with the mysterious Major Briggs outside the Sheriff’s station left them all silent and morose, Albert took control of the situation.

“Alright, enough philosophy. Daylight’s burning, the stiff’s not getting any fresher, and before I open him up we need to get our stories straight.”

Albert felt Coop’s eyes on him but he didn’t interrupt. Just followed Truman as Albert herded them back into the building.

Deputy Hill met them in the lobby and gave Albert a nod, which was a first. He had the same shocky, unsettled air about him they all still carried, but he was also holding a pink bakery box in one hand and a plastic carafe in the other and that little bit of normality made everything that had happened that afternoon take a step back into unreality where it belonged.

“Lucy made fresh coffee,” Hill said by way of greeting.

Cooper drifted towards the nook where the curly blonde was fussing with the coffee maker, hip to hip with Deputy Doolittle. Truman stepped deliberately into Albert’s line of sight then glanced over his shoulder where Cooper, his back to them, was poking around the counter by the sink, apparently looking for his usual mug. Truman didn’t so much pull Albert aside as discreetly step away towards the conference room while holding Albert’s eyes, so Albert took the hint and followed.

Truman kept his voice low and conspiring. “How’s he doing?”

And what was Albert supposed to say to that? Something must have registered on his face, because Truman nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

 

Albert found his briefcase where he’d left it a hundred years ago and took out his own mini recorder, a pad of paper, and a pen, then commandeered the seat at the head of the conference room table. Truman followed him, slumping down into the seat at his left. He’d lost the hat but kept the wary expression and Albert didn’t blame him one bit. Hill brought the box of donuts and the carafe of coffee, Cooper at his heels, the loops of two mug handles gripped in each hand. Hill dumped the box -- donuts, naturally -- on the table, while Cooper distributed mugs.

He set the mugs down with a precise, economical gesture, each mug placed exactly centered in relation to the chair, eight inches from the edge of the table, handles to the right, the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department logo facing outward. Truman caught Albert’s eye again. So the sheriff had picked up on Coop’s tendency towards compulsive order when stressed.

Albert waited until Hill had poured everyone coffee and he and Cooper took their seats, the deputy next to Albert and Cooper on the other side of Truman. Hill and Truman looked to Cooper, but Cooper was fiddling with his coffee mug. Albert cleared his throat.

“Alright. We’re going to do this as by the book as we can. One at a time, without interruptions, exactly what you saw and heard today.”

Truman and Hill were both still watching Cooper. Cooper sipped his coffee. Albert huffed, reined himself back in. Reached over and flipped the pink box open to expose the fresh donuts and shoved it in Cooper’s direction. Truman raised a brow but seemed to get the right idea, because he pushed the box further down until it came to a rest in front of Cooper.

“Coop,” Truman said, handing over one of the napkins Hill had brought.

Cooper sent Albert an impatient flick of the eyes but at least he was paying attention. His nose wrinkled as he picked a plain donut at what looked like random and set it in the middle of the napkin. Slid the napkin until it reached some predetermined proper distance from his coffee mug, edges of the napkin square with the edges of the table. Left it there, untouched.

Well, it was a step. Albert hefted the mini recorder in one hand but didn’t hit the button yet. “Truman, you first.”

After Albert hit record and gave him a nod, the sheriff rattled off a spare but accurate description of the past 24 hours, starting with finding Ferguson’s body. Albert realized as he listened that he was probably the only one at the table who _had_ gotten any sleep any time recently. He set the recorder near Truman and jotted down a few details to check when he processed Palmer.

The only piece new to him was the fact that Cooper had pulled Truman aside after his Roadhouse seance, told him to shove Palmer rather than Horne into the interrogation room. And that Truman had followed his lead without question despite all the damning evidence against Horne.

Cooper had suggested Albert offer Palmer a lift from the Roadhouse to the station and then spent the trip probing him about minor aspects of Twin Peaks town history while Albert drove. He’d been a little distant maybe, but nothing to tip Palmer off, nothing of his suspicions in his face or voice while he made small talk with the man in the back seat, the man who’d raped and murdered his own daughter and two other girls. Cooper hadn’t said a word to Albert and Albert hadn’t picked up on a thing.

Sometimes he forgot Cooper had done a stint in counterintelligence, had been undercover with the DEA. He didn’t seem like the type to lie smoothly enough, to adopt the necessary persona; in his experience Cooper rarely actually lied, he just omitted. Albert had never seen him in those capacities but now he could believe it; Cooper had kept his suspicion of Palmer to himself and played them all like pieces on a chessboard. It had taken a level of calculation Albert usually forgot Cooper had in him.

Cooper listened to Truman’s description of the day’s preposterous events with his head cocked slightly to the left, his eyes hooded. He nodded once at some detail. Sipped his coffee. And let Albert keep the reins.

Truman’s recitation was just winding down when the conference room door swung open and Deputy Fuckup wandered in, a giant white paper bag in each hand. Hill swiveled in his chair at the interruption and Albert flicked off the recorder.

“What can we do for you, Andy?” Truman had the kind of patience that only came with scraping the barrel for staff.

“Lucy thought you all might be hungry for more than donuts since it was almost six-thirty, six-thirty p.m., so she called Norma down at the diner, and Norma sent over Toad but it took longer than we thought because Toad ran into--”

Seriously? “We really don’t have time--”

Cooper pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “Thank you, Andy, that’s very thoughtful.” He circled behind Albert and took one of the bags from the deputy, who gave him a sunnily vacant grin. “Could you close the conference room door behind you?”

Albert was about 95% certain Cooper had intended the request to take place after the deputy vacated the room, but Brennan shut the door then turned back to the table with the air of a demented puppy. Coop avoided Albert’s attempts to register an urgent nonverbal protest and gestured Brennan towards the table.

The bags turned out to hold what looked like enough deli sandwiches to feed the NYPD. Cooper arranged a stack at the far end of the table, constructing a careful pyramid of white wrapped bricks. Brennan followed him and attempted to duplicate his effort, but his stack immediately collapsed in a messy heap, one sandwich skidding across the table and landing in Hill’s lap. Hill fished for the runaway and set it aside, rolling his eyes.

Albert took a deep breath, counted down from ten, and laid his palms flat on the table, watching the deputy start in on his second laborious attempt. “If you’re done building the leaning tower of pastrami, maybe we could continue this godforsaken--”

Cooper’s jaw was squared in the way that signalled he was about to pull rank. Albert raised both hands in surrender.

“Thank you, Andy. If you’ll take a seat,” Cooper said. Brennan took the chair next to Hill, noisily unwrapping the R&R special Hill had rescued.

“You going to join us?” Albert snapped. Cooper was still standing at the other end of the table, his attention back on his pyramid.

Apparently the answer was no.

Hill cleared his throat, glancing from Cooper to Albert to Truman, who nodded back at him. Albert grabbed the recorder and hit the button, slamming it down in front of Hill.

Hill’s story varied slightly from Truman’s. He’d been first on the scene at the river where Ferguson’s body washed up. Every time Hill paused, Brennan grinned at him then went back to chowing down, crumbs gathering in a semicircle around him on the table. When Hill reached the gathering at the Roadhouse, Brennan perked up.

“Oh! Me and Lucy wondered where you all had gone. Major Briggs stopped by looking for--”

Albert flicked the pause button on the recorder and stewed, momentarily incapable of speech.

“Andy.” Even Truman was starting to sound aggravated. “This is important. We’ll fill you in later, okay? Right now you need to keep quiet.”

Down at the other end of the table, Cooper leaned back against the wall next to the free standing chalkboard, watching them. He didn’t interrupt Truman and he didn’t order Brennan out of the room.

“Coop, as lead investigator could you at least--”

“You’re doing fine, Albert,” Cooper said.

Right.

Hill’s narrative reached the interrogation room and Albert forgot to glare at Cooper, because while Truman had managed to keep his voice mostly neutral, Hill’s leaked horror and disbelief. It sent Albert right back to Palmer snarling at them all with wolfish, psychotic glee.

“He said something I didn’t follow,” Hill continued, and Albert yanked himself back to the present. “Cooper asked him about Laura, and he, uh… he agreed that he killed her. Then when Cooper asked him about Maddy--” Hill paused. “He got weird. Weirder. He said something about knives, and Pittsburgh. But I thought that girl over in Deer Meadow was the first victim.”

_The thing with Palmer’s face snickers. “Oh, yeah. I suppose you want to ask him some questions, huh?”_

_Cooper positions himself behind Palmer’s right shoulder as if he thinks he can unsettle this thing, locked in a grim focus Albert has never seen before. “Did you kill Laura Palmer?”_

_Palmer lets out an unholy hooting howl then drops back into a rough facsimile of human, pleased with himself. “That’s a yes.”_

_“How about Madeleine Ferguson?” Underneath the focus, just beneath the surface, something anguished, tightly leashed._

_Deputy Hill’s shocked stare reflects the same revulsion crawling up Albert’s spine. He tries to tear his attention away from Palmer but the man -- if he is still a man -- is a black hole sucking up every bit of light in the room._

_“What do you think,” Palmer mocks, rocking in place, gaze unfocused._

_“I’m asking you.”_

_“What do you think--”_

_“Answer the question,” Cooper insists._

_Palmer’s head drifts up as he takes on a sing-song cadence. “Aw gosh gee whiz, I guess I kinda sorta did. I’ve got this thing for knives.” With that he lunges at Cooper over his shoulder, straining against the cuffs. “Just like what happened to you in Pittsburgh that time, huh Cooper?”_

_Cooper stumbles back a step, then another, robotic with shock._

Fucking hell. It’s not like Albert had forgotten exactly, but it was one of thirty seven other moments of crazy that afternoon and the detail had gotten lost in the aftermath of Palmer bashing in his own skull. Palmer had lashed out at Coop about Pittsburgh, and knives. And there was no fucking way Albert could come up with that Palmer could have known about any of it. Which meant… what, exactly?

Truman cleared his throat and Albert reached over to stop the recorder. Cooper was standing in the corner of the room ignoring them, his hands in his pockets and his attention somewhere around his shoes.

“I wasn’t sure…” Truman glanced over at Coop, back to Albert. “I wasn’t sure how relevant that was. What he said.” Hesitant, like he knew something and had held back for Cooper’s sake.

Albert doubted he had more than a hunch. Cooper didn’t talk about Pittsburgh.

He waited a beat for Cooper to contribute, to show some kind of sign, but he’d only shifted to look out the window where the sun was disappearing behind the treeline.

“Pittsburgh was an unrelated case,” Albert said, putting all the finality he could muster into the words. Hill took the hint. He gestured at Albert to start the recorder again and finished his version of events, ending with running out of the flooding interrogation room to call the ambulance that would arrive too late for Palmer.

Deputy Brennan had disappeared the rest of his sandwich, oblivious to the way the room had gone tense with all the crap Albert really didn’t want to get into around the yokels. It was Cooper’s turn to take the stand, so to speak, and Cooper was giving him the cold shoulder. Albert tapped his fingers on the tabletop while Brennan asked the sheriff if he wanted a sandwich and Truman declined.

“So are you gonna join the party any time tonight or is whatever you’re looking at out there that riveting?” Albert ground out finally.

Cooper shifted in his corner, his head coming around. “I’m seeing two things.” He pulled the words out like they were too heavy to lift.

“What--” Albert broke off as Coop’s tone caught up with him.

“Two things at once.” He’d taken on that detached, not-quite-there vibe he’d gotten in Philly when he’d prophesied Laura Palmer’s death like he’d parted a curtain to peer through time and space. _When the next murder happens, you will help me solve it._

Hill and Truman looked as lost as Albert felt. So Cooper hadn’t gone full crystal ball on them yet, huh?

“Okay, I’ll bite. What are you seeing? Is your giant friend back with us?”

Despite everything that had gone down that day he couldn’t keep the skeptical edge out of his voice. Sure, Cooper’s dreams, visions, whatever you wanted to call them, had a worryingly accurate track record; but he’d never tranced out in front of a room of small town cops before and this was the second time today and _what the hell else was there left to see about this motherfucking case._

“No,” Cooper said. “I see the shadows of the trees outside on the grass…” He blinked, trailing off.

“What else do you see?” Deputy Hill prompted, like handholding wayward psychics was in his job description. Truman at least had the sense to look troubled.

“Do you want a sandwich?” Brennan piped up.

“Andy!” Truman hissed.

“It’s getting late and nobody’s eaten,” Brennan said.

“I don’t know.” The bones of Cooper’s face shifted at whatever he thought he was seeing, the words limping out of him.

Albert went cold. He had to put a stop to this, now, but something held him in his chair. He’d seen that look on Cooper’s face before.

Brennan finally seemed to catch on to the vibe in the room, because his expression had gone comically puzzled. “Don’t know about a sandwich?”

Albert shoved away from the table with enough force to make his chair screech and turned to Brennan, ready to throttle him.

“Are you… are you seeing BOB?” Truman asked, tentative, like he wanted to take back the question. No one had invoked the name since earlier that afternoon out in the sunlight and now it was near dark.

A soft sound escaped Cooper. His hands were out of his pockets and clenching the material of his suit pants, clenching and releasing, wrinkling the fabric.

“He’s killing my mother.” Cooper spoke the words as if they were shards of glass that cut as they left him.

Albert was out of his chair and at the back of the room before he’d consciously thought through what he was doing, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

The sheriff was at his elbow. “Agent Rosenfield, I don’t think--”

Cooper’s unfocused stare shifted from Albert to Truman, molasses slow, and Albert wasn’t at all sure he knew who they were.

This was familiar too.

“Snap out of it. This case… it has nothing to do with your mother. I’ve read your personnel file. Your mother died of a perfectly pedestrian aneurism twenty years ago. It might have been tragic but it had nothing to do with--”

Cooper shook his head, his gaze lagging like it was on a delay as it returned to Albert. “I see her,” he said.

Fuck. _Fuck._ Why hadn’t he called Gordon? He’d known he should have called Gordon, this was… this wasn’t dreams about the fucking case. This wasn’t intuition. This wasn’t … fucking _magic_ or whatever bullshit he’d said back at the Roadhouse that afternoon. Somehow Palmer had known about Pittsburgh and rather than deal with that Cooper had retreated sometime much further back and he was projecting shit onto completely innocent events and _fuck this_ Albert wasn’t a fucking _shrink_.

If this was a psychotic break, he still had the vial of haloperidol left over from the one armed freak. A full dose would knock Coop into next Sunday, but a couple milligrams…

Albert turned to Truman. “My bag is next to my briefcase near the door. Bring it to me.”

“He killed her, Albert.” Coop had gone dreamy, lost somewhere way outside their zip code.

Diane’s voice, hoarse like she’d been on the phone for hours, though he’d just picked up the call. “He’s not making sense. Albert, he’s not making any sense.” And he’d finally given in to the force of her worry.

Truman returned with his medical bag and Cooper tried to become one with the wall.

Albert fumbled the bag open and dug through it, looking for the haloperidol, trying to talk himself through the indications, the dosage. Haldol was heavy shit. Gerard used it to suppress MIKE and it seemed to work, whether or not you bought that MIKE was a spirit rather than a product of florid psychosis. So far Coop was still seeing BOB outside of himself, separate, even if what he thought he was seeing was impossible. Maybe bringing out the big guns was overkill. Maybe this was just anxiety, dialed up to eleven. He might have a vial of diazepam…

There was a new voice behind Albert and he turned to find Deputy Doofus looking past him at Cooper. “Maybe we should all give Agent Cooper some air,” he said.

At Truman’s side, Deputy Hill was nodding. “I think that’s a good idea, Andy.”

Coop had started making this reedy sound that Albert finally recognized was his breathing, like he was sucking in air through one of those plastic coffee stirrer straws.

“What--” Albert tried to fight them off but Truman and Hill manhandled him backward a few feet. “Sheriff--”

Brennan had pulled out the chair at the end of the table, moving like he thought Cooper was a particularly skittish dairy cow. Coop’s eyes were closed but he let Brennan herd him into the chair. The deputy crouched down next to him, still speaking in that slow drawl that drove Albert to distraction. “Now lean forward, okay, Agent Cooper? That’s it. I’m going to take your tie off and loosen your collar for you now.”

Cooper reached up and yanked at his collar, suddenly frantic and clumsy with it.

With the pace of a sloth, Brennan gathered Cooper’s wrists in his hands and pulled them out of the way. “It’s okay, I know you can’t breathe right now. Let me help you get that tie off.”

Fuck. Was that what was happening? Albert had read Cooper’s file, yeah, but--

“Do you have your medicine with you?” Brennan asked Cooper. He’d managed to get Cooper’s tie undone and was working on the buttons of his collar. Cooper was shaking his head but Albert wasn’t sure he was responding to Brennan’s question. And shit, he recognized that wheezing now from his rotation in the ER, a million years ago.

“Maybe we should call the doc,” Truman said.

“That’s a real good idea,” Brennan answered. “But he’s going to be okay, aren’t you Agent Cooper. Just listen to my voice and try to slow down your breathing. Can you open your eyes for me?”

Cooper shook his head again but his eyes opened to slits.

Brennan’s hand was gentle on Cooper’s back. “Lean forward a little more. There you go. I’m just gonna take your jacket off for you, too.” Cooper didn’t acknowledge him, but he didn’t recoil when the deputy peeled the black suit jacket from one arm and then the other. One of his hands wrapped itself around Brennan’s wrist, his knuckles white. “Now, can you talk? Can you tell me one thing you see in this room?”

Cooper’s lips had gone dusky and his nail beds where he was gripping Brennan were blue. Shit. _Shit_. This was moving way the fuck too quickly. Albert turned to the table and dumped his bag out, his mind racing. He had to have something. The valium, maybe, but valium wouldn’t stop bronchoconstriction.

“Is there anything you can--” Truman started.

Albert snarled. “I _cut up_ bodies, I don’t--”

“Agent Rosenflower, does he carry an inhaler with him?”

“No, he doesn’t carry a fucking inhaler, he hasn’t had asthma since he was a kid--”

“Hawk, you better get that ambulance back here,” Truman said quietly. Hill nodded and hurried from the room.

Brennan had unbuttoned Cooper’s dress shirt down to his sternum and Albert could see his chest heaving and fluttering uselessly under the white fabric of his under shirt. “Okay, it’s alright,” Brennan said in his unnaturally calm voice. “You’re gonna be just fine. My younger brother had lots of asthma attacks when we were little and it was no big deal, no big deal at all. Can you tell me what you’re seeing in this room?”

Cooper choked a word out, but Albert couldn’t make sense of it.

“Good, that’s real good. The table’s sure made of wood. What else do you see in this room?”

Albert found a sealed syringe. Which wasn’t any fucking help if he couldn’t come up with anything to inject to stop this.

“Clock,” Cooper said, almost distinctly, long pauses between each word. “By… bed.”

There wasn’t a clock in the conference room that Albert could see, and there definitely wasn’t a bed. Fuck.

“Okay, but what do you see in _this_ room, right here and now, with us,” Brennan said, as unruffled as when he’d been gobbling down his sandwich. “I see a box of donuts. What do you see, right here in this room.”

Cooper was blinking, confusion bleeding around the struggle to take in air. How long until he passed out?

“F-flag,” he managed.

“Good!” Brennan cheered. “There sure is a flag, right over there. What else do you see in this room?”

It was like the world’s most deranged game of I-Spy, and Albert was going to start screaming soon if he couldn’t get his brain to snap into gear and think of something quick.

Cooper shook his head, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

And it leaped up off the table at Albert. Metaphorically speaking. “Hydrocortisone!” he barked, and Truman jumped. The little glass bottle had been staring at him the whole time. He ripped the packaging away from the syringe and grabbed the vial.

Cooper’s head was hanging between his shoulders and he was shaking with the effort to pull in a clear breath, the muscles of his abdomen working, his shirt and his undershirt already soaked through with sweat. He lifted his head, bleary and uncomprehending, when Albert crouched down on the other side of him from Brennan.

“Lemme have your arm.” Albert didn’t wait for Cooper to process the request. Just rolled his shirt sleeve back and quickly found a vein. Sank the needle in and pushed the plunger, slowly, slowly, one eye on the second hand of his watch. Whether he was too far into la la land or too exhausted to react, Coop just watched Albert pull the needle out of his flesh and press hard on the entry point to stop the bleeding.

Deputy Hill reappeared in the doorway, his face set in lines of worry. “Ambulance is on the way.”

Deputy Brennan beamed up at them all. “See? Everything’s gonna be a-okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

The wheezing had stopped but Cooper was still gasping unevenly when the paramedics eased him out of the conference room chair and onto a stretcher, and the fact that he wasn’t insisting on walking, insisting the ambulance was overkill, told its own story. Brennan climbed up into the ambulance after the stretcher, chattering in his soporific tones to Cooper, and Albert didn’t have anything left in him to argue when the sheriff offered to give him a ride to the hospital.

“Has this happened before?” Truman asked a couple of miles in, his attention on the road.

Albert looked down at his lap to find his own hands had caught a tremor from somewhere. Thought about Pittsburgh, and afterwards.

“The asthma?” Albert asked, carefully.

“Sure.”

The sheriff was looking at him sidelong. Like he was trying to give Albert an opening. Fuck that.

“Not since I’ve known him.”

“What he was saying, about BOB--”

So much for hints. Albert crossed his arms over his chest. “He told me he hasn’t slept for two or three days, sheriff. That’s what he admitted to. It’s probably been longer.”

The sheriff let Albert’s answer drop into the quiet of night. Full dark had fallen while Cooper had struggled to breathe and the headlights of the sheriff’s truck were the only illumination on this backwater road, leaving Albert with the sensation that they’d entered a deep cavern and lost track of the walls and ceiling and everything solid but the small patch of road under the tires.

“We have a gal, lives out in the woods. Margaret Lanterman.” Truman paused, like the words were coming to him from a long way off. “Her husband died in a fire the night of their wedding.”

“Look, sheriff, I’m sure the local color is fascinating, but--”

Truman ignored him and went on, aggravatingly placid. “Since the fire, she’s been different. You may have seen her around. Carries a log with her everywhere.”

“The log lady.” How long could the drive from the sheriff’s station to the hospital possibly be in this hellhole?

“Yeah, people call her the Log Lady. She gets… messages.”

“From the log, I take it?” Albert deadpanned.

“From somewhere, or someone,” Truman corrected. “She’s not often wrong. Or maybe the problem is what she hears sometimes doesn’t translate. Anyway, people in town, they accept her. Think the log is just her way of coping with what happened to her. But she was different before the fire that killed her husband. Margaret’s always been different.”

He kept hearing Cooper asphyxiating in the lulls in Truman’s little tale. “Does this story have a moral or are you just shooting the shit?”

Finally, the headlights picked out one of those blue and white road signs with the universal H for hospital. Truman guided the truck into a curve, taking his time.

“She knew things about the night Laura Palmer was killed. Maybe her log told her, maybe she heard or saw something herself and the log was the only way she could find to tell us about it. And she knew something was happening the night Maddy Ferguson was killed.”

Truman’s hands shifted on the wheel. He flipped off the high beams with an automatic flick of his wrist and outside the night pressed even closer.

“She came to the station and we went with her to the Roadhouse, Cooper and me. We listened to the band and nothing much seemed to happen, but you could feel it. Something changed. Cooper felt it too. I didn’t understand at the time and he didn’t say anything, but I think he knew.”

“Knew what?” The question escaped Albert before he could choke it back.

“What do you think it’s like,” Truman asked, with a sudden gravity Albert wouldn’t have thought possible in a hick who’d probably never left the county his entire life, “to know someone is going to die, to know for sure ahead of time, and not be able to stop it? To have no idea how to do anything about it? To have to live with that?”

Cooper, channeling hell in the Philadelphia office, and Albert had treated it like a bet.

“A lot of people in town give Margaret a wide berth,” the sheriff continued. “She unnerves them. She can be prickly. But it’s like that old story. The lady nobody believed, Cassandra, right? No one wants to listen, so they find ways to get around it. They say Margaret’s just crazy, that what happened to her drove her crazy.”

The lighted sign for Calhoun Memorial Hospital loomed ahead of them and Albert let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Sheriff Truman pulled the truck around to the emergency entrance and found a parking spot, set the brake, then killed the engine.

Albert turned to face him square on. “What are you saying?”

“You’ve known him a lot longer than I have.” Truman pulled the key out of the ignition and folded the keyring in his hand before it could jingle. “What if he’s right about this, too?”

The sheriff didn’t wait for Albert to respond, just climbed down out of the truck and headed towards the ER.

 

Either Hayward had already been on duty or someone called him in, because the good doctor met them in the waiting room nearly three hours after they’d left the sheriff’s station. By that point Albert was ready to break any vows of pacifism he’d ever taken.

Upon arrival he’d tried to force his way back into the ER but the hospital staff had refused him with bland implacability, citing security concerns due to one of their patients having been recently murdered in his bed. Albert had let out a barking laugh and gone for his badge, but Truman just put himself bodily between Albert and the hayseed security guard and offered to buy him a coffee.

“What is it with you and this place and pushing this sorry excuse for coffee on me?” Albert had groused, but he let Truman lead him away towards the hard plastic chairs.

So they waited. Waiting wasn’t something Albert was particularly good at. Brennan stuck around for the first hour but at Truman’s urging he drifted off home with what he must have thought was a reassuring smile.

“Don’t you have a station to run?” Albert snapped at Truman around hour two.

Truman just looked at him.

So hour three and he’d taken up a new hobby, pacing the scuffed linoleum floor of the waiting room and writing a scathing report to Cole in his head. He’d just reached page four when Hayward materialized from the forbidden zone.

“Harry,” Hayward greeted Truman, and took in Albert’s presence with a wary exhaustion. “I suspect you’re waiting for an update on Agent Cooper?”

Truman seemed to sense Albert was on the verge of verbally annihilating the good doctor, because he put a hand on Albert’s shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, we sure are, doc. What can you tell us?”

Hayward sighed. “He’s gonna be okay. Had us all pretty concerned when he got here, his O2 was so low, but he’s recovering. Do you know what triggered the attack?”

“What’d he tell you?” Truman asked.

“Not much, he hasn’t been up to talking. I gathered from Andy he had childhood asthma and that he hasn’t been treated for it recently. We’ve got it under control but this was a serious episode.” Hayward nodded to Albert. “If you hadn’t given him the steroid when you did he might not have made it.”

His head filled with static while Hayward continued updating Truman. “I want to see him. Now,” Albert interrupted when he found his voice again.

Hayward shook his head. “He’s out, Agent Rosenfield. Probably for the night. Judging by the way he looks, if there’s no other known trigger I’m gonna chalk this up to exhaustion. Combine that with the drugs he’s on, it might be tomorrow afternoon before he’s awake.”

Truman glanced from Hayward to Albert. “Doc, I think Dr. Rosenfield is pretty worried for his friend. Any chance he can have a couple of minutes?”

Albert could have kissed him.

“Five minutes,” Hayward told him, and Albert didn’t argue.

They had Cooper propped upright in a bed in one of the curtained-off ER cubicles and he didn’t stir at their approach. Albert had seen stiffs hit by a bus who’d looked livelier. Truman hung back near the curtains with his hat in his hands while Albert checked the chart, noting the alarming record of Coop’s vitals on arrival.

Concerned about his oxygen levels, Hayward had said. Concerned was an understatement; Cooper’s condition had plummeted after the ambulance left the sheriff’s station. _Rapid onset. Status asthmaticus_. He’d been tachycardic and his B.P. had shot through the roof, only to crash, along with his heart rate. _Complications due to previous injuries._ Shit, the broken ribs, Albert had forgotten, spooked by the channeling act. It looked like Hayward had seriously considered putting him on a vent at one point. _Marked distress at the mask._ He remembered that from after Earle, and sure enough, a high-flow nasal cannula looped behind Cooper’s ears but there was no plastic oxygen mask in sight. They were still administering IV corticosteroids and a bronchodilator and something to relax his muscles. They’d also sedated him.

He’d barely finished scanning the chart when Hayward reappeared. “Alright gentlemen, they’re gonna take him up to a room now that he’s stable. We’ll keep him overnight, see how he’s doing tomorrow.”

It hadn’t been anything like five minutes, but Albert didn’t object. All animation drained away, Cooper looked older than he should have, weary and ragged around the edges in a way that was... familiar. At least he wasn’t on life support in the ICU like after Earle had finished with him.

Or in a padded room.

Cooper’s eyes flicked back and forth under bruised lids. Albert hoped he was too far under to dream.

 

Nearly midnight by the time he made it back to the Great Northern and Albert had that jittery, overcaffeinated adrenaline crash thing going, so he ignored the neatly turned down bed and sat at the desk instead and wrote out by hand the report he’d mentally composed to Cole in the waiting room. Complete with profanity.

Gordon should have pulled Cooper from the field back when some local vigilante had taken a crack at him. Albert should have insisted. Cole knew about the dreams, knew Cooper had predicted Laura Palmer’s death. That connection was the exact reason he’d assigned Cooper the case, and it was _bullshit_. To top it off, since then Coop had involved himself in rescuing the Horne girl -- something Albert only knew about because Diane had alerted him.

“What’s he _doing_ out there, Albert?” Diane had asked him, a couple of days before Ferguson’s corpse had bought him a ticket back to the great Northwest. She’d gotten him alone and off duty on some pretext he didn’t remember, convinced him to buy her a drink at a dive down the street from the office.

Despite his own reservations, Albert had tried to brush her off. “Taking in the wildlife, I think.”

“You know he sends me tapes,” she’d said. “I type them up for his case files, but he talks about a lot of stuff. Stuff I don’t put in the record. Those tapes are official, I guess, but it’s not like anybody but me ever listens to them, so he… talks to me.”

“Yeah, yeah. He tells you all the intricate details of what he ate for lunch and what kind of new tree he might have met that day. He tell you about the cherry pie yet?”

“Albert.” Diane had tapped her nails on the chipped table between them. That day they’d been embedded with little pearlescent moon shapes in a field of dark blue. She’d been wearing two different dangly earrings and hell if Albert could tell if it was a mistake or a statement. “You’re not listening to me.”

Albert had straightened, really looked at her for the first time since she’d called him that afternoon. Diane didn’t mesh with the rest of the secretarial pool any more than Cooper had fit in the bullpen before Cole recruited him. They were two peas in a pod, Diane and Cooper. He’d never been able to figure out if they’d had a thing or not but he suspected that if they had it’d been years ago. Before Pittsburgh.

The only other time Diane had cornered Albert like this had been _after_ Pittsburgh.

He’d put his beer down and given her his full attention. “Okay, Diane. I’m listening. What’s he telling you on those tapes of his that I need to know?”

Last time, Diane had been the only one of them who had caught on that there was something wrong, something really wrong beyond what had already happened. Albert hadn’t listened and it had been a near thing.

Diane deflated a little, like she’d thought he was going to dismiss her again.

“This case, that town. It’s like… he feels responsible. Not just for the dead girl, you know what I’m saying? He’s usually so by the book it drives everyone nuts, but he crossed the border without authorization, twice. Went after a local kid who got herself kidnapped by a Canadian thug named Renault. I haven’t put it in any report, but Albert… I think maybe I should tell Gordon. Off the record.”

He wished he’d asked her when exactly Cooper had crossed into Canada. Gordon had traipsed out to Twin Peaks three or four days ago, ostensibly to deliver forensics results while Albert was tangled up in court on another case. Since ferrying basic evidence wasn’t exactly in the wheelhouse at Gordon’s level, Albert didn’t know if Diane had told him anything or if Gordon had gotten concerned for his own reasons.

Gordon wasn’t big on sharing information unless he thought you needed to know and Albert tried to tell himself he trusted Gordon’s judgment. And he did, most of the time. But this godforsaken case had already disappeared one Blue Rose agent and now the replacement had landed in the ER for the second time in ten days.

Fucking Blue Rose.

ALBERT, THERE’S MORE IN HEAVEN AND EARTH THAN IS DREAMT OF IN OUR PHILOSOPHY, Cole had rattled off as his introduction to Blue Rose. Briggs had echoed the quote that afternoon, under the reassuringly mundane fir trees outside the sheriff’s station.

_“But people saw BOB.” Albert hears himself saying, though he isn’t ready to believe it. Blue Rose or not, invading elemental spirits or whatever the fuck they were discussing was a step he wasn’t sure he was ever going to accept, not deep down. If BOB had been seen, outside of dreams, in the same place they knew Palmer had committed his crimes..._

_“How did Ronette see him in the train car?” Truman asks from where he’s sunk down to the ground, a tree trunk at his back, his mind running on a parallel track to Albert’s. Was Truman questioning whether Ronette saw a physical manifestation or another kind of vision? None of them have quite settled on the metaphysics of it all._

_“Maybe the head injury,” Cooper muses, still holding the brown paper bag with the donut Albert had bought him on the way over here, untouched. “The trauma opened some kind of perceptual window…”_

_He’d never theorized exactly how he was able to tune into whatever frequency had gotten them here, this afternoon. At least not to Albert. “How did_ you _see him?” Albert blurts before he can think better of the question._

_Tenderness washes over Cooper’s expression before something darker and full of doubt crowds it out._

_Of all people, it’s Briggs who finally breaks the silence opened between them all by Albert’s outburst. “That question may require a bit more self-examination,” the major says to Cooper._

_Cooper meets the major’s even gaze and sips his fucking coffee, gone inward again_.

Albert stared down at the legal pad filled with his messy handwriting. Tore the pages from the pad and methodically ripped them into narrow strips until they curled on the desktop like confetti.

 _Stand on the rim of the volcano._ Albert had told him after the Ferguson girl had turned up dead. _Stand alone and do your dance. Just find this beast before he takes another bite._

Cooper, of course, had taken it as literally as possible. And where had Albert’s suggestion gotten them?

_He’s killing my mother._

Present tense. Like he’d been watching it happen right there with them in the goddamned conference room.

Albert swept the remains of his report to Cole into the metal trash can next to the desk and picked up the phone. Hesitated, Cole’s home number running through his head, then ordered a scotch on the rocks from room service instead.

What could Cole do about any of it now? The case was over. Cooper would be back in Philadelphia by the weekend.

 

Cooper was awake, the duty nurse told Albert the next morning, and already trying to check himself out against medical advice. The relief that shot through him left him distracted enough that he had to ask her to repeat the room number.

By the time he found the right room Cooper had apparently given up arguing with the staff for the moment and had been left to his own devices, flipping through a magazine dating from the late seventies judging by the cover model’s hairstyle. The head of the bed was jacked to keep him upright and contrary to whatever he’d told the nurses it looked like the mattress and pillows were supporting most of his weight and his face had the greyish cast of day old oatmeal.

“Hell of a way to weasel out of your witness interview,” Albert said from the doorway.

Cooper smiled, but it was a faded, unformed thing. His voice when it came was scratchy and half strength. “Albert. Perhaps you can reassure the kind folks here that I’m fit to sleep it off in my own bed.”

“If that’s what you’re calling those planks they’ve got over at the Great Northern.”

Cooper made a grinding sound, halfway between a choking cough and a laugh. “Don’t,” he wheezed, one hand fluttering up to press against his chest.

It hadn’t been that funny.

The nasal cannula was gone and so was the IV, but he was still hooked up to a couple monitors that told Albert his oxygen wasn’t quite back to normal and his heart rate remained elevated. Albert lifted his chart and hummed over it for a moment, taking the chance to study him. The smile was back, brighter this time, though his eyes were sunken into his skull and ringed with bluish shadows. His breathing sounded okay now that he wasn’t fighting laughter but it looked too deliberate to Albert, like he was concentrating on every inhalation. According to his chart they hadn’t taken him off oxygen until an hour before Albert arrived.

“Autopsy?” Cooper asked, rolling the magazine into a tube.

“My next stop. I doubt I’ll find anything beyond the head trauma,” Albert said. “Truman and Hill covered the bases for us on Palmer’s confession. We’ll still have to write it up for the record.”

And then get the hell out of Dodge.

Cooper twisted his magazine tube tighter in his hands, let it unfurl. “I need to listen to the recordings you made.”

Albert peered at him over the chart. “How much do you remember?”

Cooper shifted, like he was getting ready to lie, then lifted his chin. “I know what Harry said.”

“And the deputy?”

Cooper flattened the glossy cover of the magazine under his hands, smoothing out the wrinkles. “The night we found Maddy. A bit after that.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t want to do this, but Cooper wasn’t leaving him any other option. “We’re going to have to talk about it at some point. You know that.”

Cooper had gone rigid against the pillows, the bones of his hands stark against the skin. “Talk about what.”

“You know exactly what. Cooper--”

“What do you want me to say, Albert?”

Albert swallowed down the rant that wanted to burst out of him.

_I’ve got this thing for knives._

_He’s killing my mother._

“Do you remember what you told me last night?”

Cooper folded his hands over the magazine. Met Albert’s eyes straight on. “No.”

Albert couldn’t read him at all. But when he let it go, Cooper didn’t ask what he’d meant.

 

Wonder of wonders, Hayward somehow managed to convince Coop to stay in his room like a good boy until Albert finished slicing and dicing Palmer, with the rationale that they needed to run a few tests before they released him. Albert doubted they’d find anything more of note than he’d found in Palmer’s body, but just in case there was something to find he took his time with the autopsy. Gave Hayward the chance to be thorough, between the bullet wound and broken ribs and the near fatal asthma attack.

Which wasn’t to say he was at all surprised to find Cooper out of bed and fully dressed in yesterday’s suit when he got back to the hospital that afternoon.

“What, no tie?” Albert quipped when Cooper looked up at his arrival.

He shrugged. “It appears to have gone missing.”

“Ask Deputy Brennan.” Coop tilted his head in confusion. Whether it was because Albert had called the deputy by his proper name or because he didn’t remember Brennan talking him down the previous night, he didn’t ask for clarification. “Ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

Cooper grinned. “Albert, I’ve been ready since I woke up.”

Albert doubted that, but he didn’t argue. “Hayward give you any meds to go?”

Cooper hefted a paper bag Albert hadn’t noticed.

“Anything I need to know?” As if he didn’t plan to pump Hayward for information as soon as he got Coop settled back at the hotel.

Cooper shrugged. “He wants to see me tomorrow,” he admitted. Then, at something in Albert’s face, “He told me you saved my life.”

Anything Albert might have said to that refused to take root.

“Thank you. This time I can honestly say I’m very glad that you did.” And with that he gave Albert’s arm a quick squeeze and walked past him out of the room.

 

Albert filled Cooper in on Palmer’s autopsy while he ferried him back to the Great Northern. There wasn’t much to tell. Cause of death: self inflicted trauma to the skull. Otherwise he’d been a perfectly healthy 45 year old man.

“Self inflicted,” Cooper repeated, staring out at the passing trees. “Hmm.”

There’d be two versions of his report. One for the locals and one for Cole. The double paperwork was another reason Albert hated Blue Rose cases.

“The funeral is the day after tomorrow.”

Hayward must have told him. Albert hadn’t thought to wonder who had broken the news to Mrs. Palmer. Yet another reason Albert stuck to the stiffs.

“Harry,” Cooper said out of nowhere.

Albert glanced at him. “Hairy who?”

If Coop got the reference, he didn’t let on. “Harry had to tell Sarah that Leland died. And what he’d done to Laura and Maddy.”

Albert gripped the steering wheel. “I really hate it when you do that.”

Cooper’s answering grin was just this side of sad. “I know you do.”

 

Getting him settled in his room at the Great Northern was easier than Albert had expected, which probably meant he was two steps away from collapse. He’d made it okay on his own as far as the third floor but once they stepped out of the elevator he’d had to stop, a death grip on Albert’s elbow.

“I’d forgotten about this part.” Sweat was pooling in the hollow of Cooper’s throat and all his concentration appeared to be focused on keeping himself upright. Albert could see his pulse fluttering in a vein at his temple.

“You blacking out on me?”

“No.” He didn’t exactly sound confident.

“Dizzy?”

“Yes.”

“You ever end up in the hospital as a kid?” Albert asked, to give him time to recover.

“Yes.” Cooper dropped Albert’s arm. He didn’t elaborate and Albert didn’t push, just kept an eye on him until they reached the door to room 315. Which took, by Albert’s estimation, approximately three times longer than it would have otherwise.

Once Cooper seemed comfortable, propped up in bed with extra pillows Albert had gathered from his own room, he ordered them both an early dinner from room service and dumped the files from his briefcase out on the desk. Coop had refused to get under the covers but at least he’d let Albert strip off the damn suit jacket and his shoes.

“Can you lie flat yet?” Albert asked.

“Not a good idea.” He let his head sink back into the pillows. “I want to read your autopsy report.”

“After you eat something.”

“Okay.” It was a little too passive, like he’d only asked for the file to have something to occupy his mind.

Albert straddled the desk chair. “You should call Diane. You know, talk on the phone. In person.”

Cooper picked nonexistent lint from the comforter by his knee. “Albert--”

“She’s worried about you. Before I got out here she was talking about going to Cole.”

Pushing himself up straighter in the pillows, Cooper frowned. “I don’t see why that would be necessary.”

Rage bubbled up from Albert’s belly. He throttled it best he could, but it boiled over. “ _Don’t you?_ ”

With exquisite timing -- and at this point Albert wouldn’t have put it past him to have somehow willed the distraction -- there came a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Albert yelled.

“Room service!” someone behind the door called, enragingly cheerful.

“We’re not done here,” Albert jabbed his finger at Cooper as he crossed to the door.

And of course, _of course_ , it was the universe’s most decrepit room service waiter, somehow precariously balancing an oversized tray carrying two covered plates and two full glasses of milk in his spindly grip. As Albert opened the door one of the glasses slid half a foot to the left.

“Oh, hello!” Señor Droolcup beamed at Albert. Albert unburdened him before their entire order could crash to the floor. “Why thank you!”

Albert abandoned the door and stalked to the desk with the tray, shoving his files aside to make room. By the time he’d turned around the geriatric waiter was next to the bed, hovering over Cooper.

“Nice to see you again,” the old man said to Cooper.

Coop smiled. “Thanks for helping me out yesterday.”

The waiter beamed, expression both utterly confused and over-the-moon delighted. Albert had forgotten the man had been there at the Roadhouse, had hitched a ride with Briggs. And that Cooper had seemed to expect him.

“You need to be careful,” the old man told Cooper. “He’ll try to get in now.”

Coop froze as if that meant something to him, but the geezer was already turning away.

“Is there a bill?” Albert prompted, keeping one eye on Cooper, who’d gone blank behind the eyes like the old man’s words had flipped a switch, lights out.

“Oh, oh yes.” The waiter pulled a pad from his apron pocket and handed it to Albert to sign. “You should listen more, you know.”

Albert signed the receipt and shoved the pad and pen back towards him, completely over the entire town and everyone in it. “Oh yeah, listen more to what? Your senile ramblings?”

The waiter gave him an oblivious smile. “To what you already know.” With that, he tottered out of the room.

Albert shut the door and locked it, then checked the locks again for good measure. He’d taken Cooper’s weapon from him with his suit jacket and shoes and had to stamp down on the sudden urge to unholster the damn thing and carry it around with him with the safety off. As it was he made sure it was where he’d left it on the dresser.

Had second thoughts and moved it over to the desk, within easy reach.

 _He’ll try to get in now_.

Albert didn’t ask what the old man had meant. From the way Cooper had folded into himself, he had a feeling he wouldn’t tell him anyway.

 

After they ate Albert didn’t even pretend he planned to go back to his own room, so he just planted himself at the desk with his files and let Coop wear himself out with his objections. Once he’d wound down Albert crossed to the bed and held out his hand. Cooper sighed, but he accepted the pile of pills Hayward had sent home with him and the glass of water Albert brought from the bathroom.

If he recognized the sedative Hayward had prescribed, he didn’t say anything.

“What was Diane worried about?” he asked, some time later.

Albert looked up from the file he’d spread out. Cooper’s eyes were at half mast and he’d melted into the pillows like he’d given up the fight against gravity. “Canada. The Horne girl.”

“Oh,” Cooper’s eyes slid the rest of the way closed, but his mouth was pinched.

“Oh, is right.” Albert picked through a selection of words and discarded most of them. “What were you thinking, going out of your jurisdiction like that?”

“Audrey was in trouble.”

Right. “Yeah, well, it had nothing to do with the case you were assigned.”

Cooper opened his eyes and shoved himself up a little in the pillows. “What would you have done?”

Someday Albert was going to tear out what little hair he had left during one of these conversations. “Left it up to the locals! If Cole catches wind--”

Cooper studied him, impassive. “Did Diane tell Gordon what happened?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it, since he didn’t haul your ass back to Philly with him when he was here.”

“What are _you_ going to do about it?” He had the balls to sound genuinely curious, like Albert’s reaction was the most fascinating thing he’d come across that day.

Albert almost got up and left the room. Slamming the door on the way out would have been a satisfaction worth the childishness. As it was all he did was fist his hands until they ached.

“Don’t,” he managed to get out. He wasn’t sure what he’d even meant by it, but Cooper nodded, solemn.

“Albert,” he said, “I apologize.”

Albert didn’t know what the fuck Cooper thought he was apologizing for. He almost asked him point blank, but kept his mouth shut.

He didn’t really want to hear the answer.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Albert dreamed he was shouting at Cole, but Cole kept frowning up at him from his desk, fiddling with the controls to his hearing aids. He woke with a start, his head pillowed on a mess of files, Cooper’s gun under his hand. Some pacifist he was.

As far as dreams went Albert figured that one had been pretty obvious.

When he turned around there was a Cooper-shaped dent in the pillows on the bed, but no Cooper. There was, however, a slip of paper placed precisely in the middle of the neatly tucked comforter.

 _Went for coffee._ , the note read in Coop’s tight cursive.

Albert scrubbed at his eyes, weary beyond measure. Cooper had left the room key on the dresser so Albert swept his files and the gun into his briefcase and locked the door behind him.

 

At breakfast Albert somehow lost the argument against Cooper jumping right back into work and hell if he had any idea how it had happened. But Cooper wanted to check in with the sheriff before his appointment with Hayward and the thing about Cooper was he rarely broke the serene surface of his insistence but things tended to go the way he wanted them to go. In the end the best Albert could do was insist on driving.

The rustic facade of the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station was starting to look like home to him, so he figured it was beyond time he got his ass back to the real world. Cooper was smiling at him from the passenger seat as Albert yanked on the parking brake with more force than was strictly necessary.

“Not a word of whatever you’re thinking right now,” he said.

“Okay.” Coop stowed the manic grin and squinted through the windshield at the sign above the station door. “I’m staying for Leland’s funeral.”

Like hell. “That’s a bad idea.”

Cooper didn’t ask him why. “I owe it to Sarah and to the town, to help put him to rest. To give them some closure.”

“You solved the case. You don’t owe them anything more than that. They’re not your fucking--”

“Responsibility?” There was steel in his voice, and Albert knew better than to bother with arguments when he got like this. After a heartbeat Cooper softened. “You don’t need to stay. Your part in this is finished.”

“Coop--”

“It’ll just be a couple of days.” With that he slipped out of the car.

When they pushed through the glass double doors the whole crew was gathered in the lobby as if waiting expectantly for their arrival.

“Hey, good morning.” Truman’s face lit up at Cooper, then he turned and clapped Albert on the back in welcome.

“Agent Cooper! How’re you feeling?” Deputy Brennan asked. At his side, the blonde -- Lucy -- held out a couple of mugs of coffee.

“Just fine, Andy, thank you.” Cooper accepted one of the mugs of coffee from Lucy.

“You’re looking better than you did yesterday,” Hill said. “Glad to see it.”

Which meant the Sheriff’s Department must have made a field trip to the hospital while Albert was dissecting Palmer. Albert wasn’t sure why he was surprised.

“Here you go, Agent Rosenfield,” Lucy offered him the mug like maybe it wasn’t optional, so he took it from her and gave her a nod of thanks.

“C’mon into the conference room,” Truman said. “Lucy set out a spread.”

Cooper surveyed the ridiculous array of stacked pastries with the appreciation of a true connoisseur.

“I got extra jelly filled. I didn’t know what kind Agent Rosenfield likes best so there’s a few of everything,” Lucy turned to Albert, her face screwed up with worry. “There’s Boston Cream and apple turnovers and they even had some crullers, which I don’t particularly care for but Andy--”

Albert dug deep. “Thank you, I’m sure I’ll find something.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her he hated donuts.

Cooper gave his shoulder a quick pat and grabbed a powdered sugar drenched monstrosity. Once things had settled down into sugary munching, Cooper turned to Truman.

“Harry, how did Sarah take the news?”

Truman removed his hat, ran a hand through his hair. “About as well as you might expect. The Haywards convinced her to stay with them for a couple of days. Mrs. Hayward and Donna are helping with the arrangements.” The hat returned to its place and Truman put a hand on Cooper’s arm. “If you’re up to it, I think she has some questions she needs to ask you.”

Cooper gave him a nod. “Of course. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you yesterday. I’ll see if she’s ready to talk to me this afternoon.”

“What’re you going to tell her?” Albert asked, curiosity getting the best of him. Hill and Truman both paused, turning to Cooper.

Cooper set his half eaten donut down on a napkin. Red jelly oozed out, staining the paper.

“As much as she wants to know.”

After that none of them had much of an appetite for donuts.

 

By the time they got back to the Great Northern for lunch Albert could tell Cooper was flagging. He’d been withdrawn since Albert picked him up from his appointment at the hospital and he carried himself with the hesitant gait of an old man, like maybe he was finally feeling the number the other night had done on his body.

Once they were seated in the dining room Cooper ordered the soup of the day -- chicken noodle, appropriately enough -- and scanned Albert’s completed autopsy report while they waited for their food. Albert had presented his findings to the assembled Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department before they left for the hospital, but Cooper wanted to see the hard data for himself. Albert doubted he’d find anything worth comment.

“What’d Hayward tell you?” Albert asked as Cooper flipped through the file.

He shrugged. “All clear.”

Right. Albert tore a strip from one of the paper napkins the waitress had left them. “That’s it? You nearly died.”

“Albert, I’m okay.” Cooper closed the file. “I am very tired, but that will pass in a day or two.”

“Any follow up?”

The waitress -- Trudy, Cooper had called her -- stopped by to refresh their coffees and refill Albert’s water glass. After she sauntered away to the next table, Cooper dug in his pocket and held up a blue plastic contraption.

“Said I should carry this around for awhile. But I doubt it will be necessary.”

Albert took the thing from him. A standard rescue inhaler. When he handed it back Cooper studied the inhaler, pensive, before he slipped it back into his pocket.

“He have any more idea what brought the attack on?”

Trudy was back, this time carrying a tray. She set a large steaming bowl in front of Cooper and handed Albert his egg salad sandwich, which had been the only thing close to vegetarian on the menu.

“The stress of the case, most likely.” Cooper answered once the waitress left them alone again.

Something in his tone struck Albert as off. “What do _you_ think triggered it?”

Cooper blew on his soup.

“Cooper--”

Coop glanced up at him, as if weighing something. Whatever he saw, he just sighed. “I think I got shot not so long ago and hadn’t slept for three days.”

When Albert opened his mouth to press the issue, Cooper asked him for a rundown on Palmer’s toxicology report.

Subject closed.

 

“The interviews you taped -- I still need to hear what Harry and Hawk said.” Cooper leaned against the back of the elevator, letting the wood paneling support his weight. He’d been cradling his right arm tight against his chest since they left the dining room and the lines around his mouth had deepened.

“You were there,” Albert said, “I don’t know what could possibly be on that tape that you don’t already know.”

A muscle jumped along Cooper’s jaw. “I need to hear what you saw, too.”

Albert looked him up and down. “Okay. But first I’m giving you a painkiller for those ribs. Not aspirin, this time. And afterwards you’re taking a break.”

Refusal simmered under the surface while Cooper weighed his options. “When we’re finished,” he said, like this was a negotiation.

Albert supposed it was. He led the way to his own neglected hotel room, where he’d left his medical bag. After locking the door behind them he dug into his briefcase for the mini recorder and when he looked up Coop was perched stiffly on the wooden desk chair. All of the pillows were still over in room 315, so it wasn’t like he’d be that much more comfortable on the bed. Albert let his half-formed objection fade.

He handed over the recorder and retreated to sit on the end of the bed while Cooper rewound the tape. When Coop hit play Harry Truman’s even voice materialized, describing the discovery of Madeleine Ferguson’s body. Around the time Truman got to shoving Palmer into the interrogation cell Cooper’s eyes drifted shut, his mouth pressed in a thin line like he was visualizing the scene.

At the sound of Deputy Brennan’s interruption, Cooper hit pause. Blinked a little, attention flickering briefly to Albert.

“Hill’s version is basically the same,” Albert said. “It looked to me like you might have checked out around the time he was--”

“It’s okay, Albert.” Cooper smiled, but it was a wan thing. “I need to hear it.”

“Why?” Albert found his hands were clenched on his knees. “It’s over. All that’s left is dotting the eyes and crossing the tees on your report to Cole.”

“I need to hear what Hawk said.”

“About Palmer.” And Pittsburgh.

“Yes.” With that he started the tape again. When Hill got to his question about Pittsburgh, Cooper flinched like he hadn’t realized it was coming. Like it had taken him by surprise. He stopped the tape again, staring down at the recorder cradled in his hands. “What--” he swallowed, made another attempt. “What exactly did he say?”

Albert stared at him. Cooper rewound the tape, played Hill’s words again. _He said something about knives, and Pittsburgh. But I thought that girl over in Deer Meadow was the first victim._

“Cooper--”

He’d gone a few shades shy of translucent as he rewound the tape a second time. Before he could hit play again, Albert laid a hand over the recorder. Cooper let him take it from him.

He didn’t _remember_. He didn’t fucking know what Palmer had said to him. During the interrogation Albert had watched him back away from Palmer, but--

Albert felt his own chest want to seize.

He’d been fine in the hallway afterwards. Running on adrenaline like they’d all been, weaving together his visions and visitations with the hard evidence. He hadn’t missed a beat.

Cooper’s voice had gone low and thin. “I need to know.”

“No, you don’t,” Albert insisted. “Palmer’s dead. It doesn’t matter.”

Coop’s eyes were closed again. “I know I asked him about Maddy. I know he… must have admitted to killing her.” He was holding himself very still in his chair, and his breathing had gone shallow and too controlled. “Then Harry asked if Leland knew what he’d done.”

Shit. What? “Truman didn’t ask Palmer if he knew what he’d done. You did.”

Cooper shook his head, a rough cough escaping him like he’d tried to hold it in. Okay. Okay, so it was… he’d lost the plot. Just for a moment. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the givens, but Albert had been too wrapped up in the horrorshow to catch it at the time. When Coop let out another cough it was edged with an airless whistle.

“Where’s that inhaler Hayward gave you?” Albert asked. Cooper shook his head again, but he didn’t try to speak, either. “Cooper--”

Coop fumbled in his pocket and pulled the inhaler out. Gave the thing a shake and took a puff, his face twisting in distaste.

“I want you to see a shrink when you get home,” Albert said once Cooper’s breathing had eased. “One you’ll actually talk to this time.”

Cooper opened his eyes and looked up as if Albert had spoken in Norwegian. “And tell them what, exactly?”

That was the whole problem, wasn’t it.

“Albert, please.”

Albert squeezed the recorder so tightly it dug into his palms. “Fine. Palmer knew about fucking Pittsburgh.”

“It wasn’t Leland in that room.” Cooper watched Albert like he would a flight risk. “What did BOB say to me?”

Albert wanted to walk out. Wanted to turn in his badge and go play M.E. somewhere normal, where the worst he’d see was the occasional bus crash or domestic.

“It’s okay. I can ask Harry, later. But I’d rather--”

Albert stood up. Turned his back, just for a moment.

Images flashed by too quickly to hold onto: a pool of red, smeared and already congealing. A hunting knife, blood tacky on the hilt. Fragments of frayed rope and a pile of dirt. A shattered mirror. A scattering of feathers.

By the time he’d made it to the safe house they’d taken Cooper away in the ambulance. He’d been called in to secure the scene, to process Caroline Earle. There’d been… a lot of blood. He still wasn’t sure what Cooper remembered about that night, but the evidence at the scene hadn’t precisely lined up with the narrative he’d given Gordon, sketchy as it was, two weeks later. From the ICU.

Albert turned around. Cooper looked as battered as he felt.

“You asked him… asked _it_. If it had killed Ferguson.”

Cooper nodded.

“It said it had a thing for knives. Kind of like that time in Pittsburgh.” Albert scrubbed his face with his hands. “That’s it. That’s all he said.”

“Thank you.” Cooper had leaned forward a little in the chair, his hands braced on his thighs. “I think you’d better give me one of those painkillers now.”

If he was asking outright it had to be bad. Albert went for his bag.

 

Eyes glazed with the vicodin Albert had pressed on him, Cooper retreated to room 315, promising to take a catnap before he called Sarah Palmer. Albert spent a good hour putting his final report to Cole in order before he found himself pacing his room. His third circuit was interrupted by the nerve-jangling ring of the phone.

“ALBERT!”

Albert held the receiver away from his ear with a wince. Shit, he wasn’t ready to talk to Gordon. He needed to get his ducks in a row, pull together a convincing argument that didn’t sound like he was Cooper’s anxious nanny, but also wouldn’t land the guy in early retirement.

“ALBERT? YOU STILL THERE?”

“Yeah, Gordon. I’m here.” He sank into the desk chair, his head in his hand.

“EXCELLENT! I HEAR FROM COOP THE CASE IS CLOSED. GOOD WORK, BOTH OF YOU. IT WAS A DIFFICULT THING BUT NO MATCH FOR A COUPLE OF DIAMOND SHARP MINDS WORKING IN TANDEM.”

“Gordon--”

“I EXPECT TO HEAR ALL ABOUT IT WHEN I SEE YOU IN PHILADELPHIA TOMORROW MORNING. THERE’S AN URGENT MATTER, BUT FIRST WE’LL DEBRIEF--”

“Gordon, I haven’t--”

“THERE’S A TICKET WAITING FOR YOU AT SEA-TAC. REDEYE, BUT IT COULDN’T BE HELPED.”

“Gordon. I really think I need to stick around here for a few more days. Cooper--”

“COOP’S GONNA TAKE A COUPLE OF DAYS OFF, AND IT’S A WELL-DESERVED BREAK. I’VE GOT SOMETHING I NEED YOU TO LOOK INTO FOR ME, TOP PRIORITY.”

“No, Gordon, you need to listen to me. Something happened, you need to--”

“WHAT? YOU’LL HAVE TO PUT OFF ANY VACATION PLANS FOR A FEW MORE WEEKS. I’VE GOT A REAL MESS ON MY HANDS HERE.”

It was pointless. Over the phone Cole was stone deaf. If he wanted to get his point across he was going to have to do it in person.

“Okay, okay. I’ll be there. We need to talk.”

“WELL, YOU MIGHT HAVE A LITTLE TIME FOR A WALK BEFORE THE DRIVE TO SEATTLE, IF YOU CHECK OUT NOW.”

“I said we _need to talk_ \--”

But Cole had disconnected the call.

 

When Albert reached the lobby to inform the hotel of his unexpected and immanent departure, Cooper was already there. He and Truman were sharing one of the couches in the lounge, heads together, knees touching, so intent on whatever they were discussing they didn’t notice his arrival until he cleared his throat.

Both heads came up in one movement. Cooper sat back, eyeing Albert’s luggage. He didn’t have the grace to fake surprise.

“I take it you already talked to Cole,” Albert said. Cooper didn’t deny it. “What’d you tell him?”

Cooper just smiled. “Case closed. I’ll give him a full report when I get back.”

“You tell him about our incorporeal friend?”

Cooper’s smile thinned. “Not over the phone, no. He met MIKE, he knows what kind of case this was.”

So he hadn’t mentioned what Palmer -- or BOB -- had said to him. Or that he’d… gone briefly AWOL from the interrogation. Let alone his night in the hospital.

Shocker.

Truman was frowning. “You mean this isn’t the first time you’ve seen something like this. Like… what happened with Leland.”

Shit. Albert let Cooper field that one. Cooper leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees before he turned back towards the sheriff. “I’ve never seen anything like what happened here, Harry.” It wasn’t quite an answer, but it was sincere.

Truman accepted it, his posture thoughtful. Sharper than he looked, but Albert had already figured that much out.

“When’s your flight, Albert?” Cooper asked.

“Cole’s got me on the redeye back to Philadelphia.”

Cooper rose from the couch, a little more ease in his movements than he’d had earlier. “Great. Plenty of time for me to buy you a piece of pie before you hit the road.”

“Cooper--”

“Lemme duck into the head and we’ll see you off the right way.” With that he disappeared down the hallway, leaving Albert alone with the sheriff.

Albert shifted his suitcase from one hand to the other and Truman tipped back his hat with one finger. How very cowboy of him.

“What about Mrs. Palmer?” Albert asked, finally, for something to say.

“She needed a little more time.”

“Ah.”

Truman scuffed one of his boots against the carpet. “Look, I know he got hurt in Pittsburgh. Sounded pretty serious,” he said. “Your boss didn’t exactly keep his voice down when he was here, and he was worried. After what Leland said to Coop… if BOB is still out there--”

“Sheriff--”

“No, hear me out, Agent Rosenfield. I’ve worked with feds before and most of the time they treat us like an inconvenience at best. But from the moment Cooper got here he’s been nothing but respectful of this town and aware of the impact these crimes have had on the people here.”

Over Truman’s shoulder, Albert could see Cooper making his way back to the lobby. He was whistling, his hands in the pockets of his trench coat.

“What’s your point, Truman?”

Truman gave him a patient smile. “My point, Albert, is we take care of our own. And you’re welcome back to Twin Peaks any time.”


	4. Chapter 4

Albert stumbled into arrivals in PHL the next morning in that particular half-awake, half-strung out zone that only overnight coast-to-coast air travel could induce. So when someone caught his arm as he blundered through the crowd on his way to find a taxi, his first reflex was profanity. The object of his poorly aimed curse waited for him to run out of steam before taking his suitcase from him like it was a regular thing.

“Gordon really can be a prick,” Diane said. “Putting you on the redeye like that?” 

Albert blinked at her, reasonably certain he was hallucinating. “Diane, not that it’s not a delight to see you after spending the night crammed cheek to jowl with the rest of the schlubs in economy class, but--”

“Why am I here?”

Albert nodded, too weary for games.

“Thought you might need a ride.” She was dressed for work, which for Diane meant an ensemble that carved out a precarious space between Ziggy-era Bowie and yuppie chic. Somehow she never quite violated the Bureau’s dour dress code, a mystery Albert hoped to solve before he retired.

“Diane.”

“I had a feeling, okay? Dale hasn’t sent me any tapes for awhile, and then last night Gordon told me you’d closed the case.” She took off towards the sign for short term parking, leaving Albert to catch up. 

“You had a feeling.” Albert was pretty tired of people and their feelings. He was pretty tired of his own fucking feelings, at this point.

Diane turned and held the door for him, scanning his face. “Oh shit, something _did_ happen, didn’t it?”

“Diane--”

“I tried to tell Gordon but he’s been getting crap from Washington about this new case and anyway he said he talked to Dale yesterday.” Before Albert could get in a word edgewise, she’d come to a halt next to a perfectly preserved powder blue VW Beetle convertible. 

“This is your car?”

Diane unlocked the passenger side door and shot him a hostile glare. “Like I’d drive one of those boring Bureau sedans. Get in, will you? Gordon wants you at the office by nine.”

Albert folded himself down into the Beetle and resigned himself to the inevitable third degree.

“So what happened? Why didn’t he fly back with you?”

“Funeral,” Albert said, clinging to the Beetle’s door as Diane took a curve at twice the recommended speed. 

“Palmer’s?” She hit the wheel with the heel of her hand. “Fuck. I _told_ you.”

“Yeah, you told me.” 

“There’s something else,” Diane said. Not a question. “Something the other night.”

Where did Cole find all these fucking _sensitives_ at a place as straight laced as the F.B.I.?

“It’s over, Diane. He’ll be back in a couple of days.”

Diane fished around one-handed in the vintage clutch she’d left wedged between the seats and came up with a pack of cigarettes. Albert was half afraid she’d try to light up while she was driving, but she held off until the next red light. Took a couple of puffs, watching the traffic signal. 

“A couple of days,” she echoed, dubious. She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, half smoked.

From the airport she navigated the Beetle onto the expressway and it was smooth sailing until they hit the usual commuter traffic on the bridge. 

“We’re gonna be late,” she muttered to herself, tapping the wheel. Her nails had lost the moons, shellacked in a staid -- for Diane -- shade of burgundy. 

Albert was beginning to wish he’d asked her to stop for some coffee. He found himself nodding off if the car spent too long in one place. “Hey, uh, when he chatters at you on those tapes, he talk about his family at all?”

Diane glanced at him sidelong, like he was asking her to break the confidentiality of the confessional. “Yeah, sometimes. Why?”

“He ever bring up his mother?”

“He doesn’t talk about her much, she died when he was a kid. Albert, what’s going on? This have anything to do with what happened the other night?”

Figures a woman who worked for a detective would have picked up a knack for interrogation over the years. “Diane, nothing happened!”

“You’re a terrible fucking liar. What’s got you so spooked?”

“Pittsburgh,” Albert said. 

Diane went still in the driver’s seat, biting her lip. “What about it?”

“He’s… okay right? It was years ago.”

“Yeah,” she said, “it was.” She seemed on the edge of saying something else.

“What is it?”

“You were just there. He didn’t tell you?”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“Gordon went to see Dale a couple of days ago. After you and I talked.”

Albert nodded. “I take it you ended up telling him about what went down in Canada?”

“No, that’s the thing, he left before I got up the nerve. Look, I only know about this because I open his mail. Dale’s, I mean.”

“Diane, what the hell is going on?”

Shadows from the bridge overhead passed over her face in bands of light and dark as traffic started moving again. 

“This envelope shows up, no return address. But whoever sent it knew how to get it to the right place, internal routing codes and everything. So I open it up and it’s just a slip of paper with some letters and numbers. But it seemed like _something_. So I bagged it and took it to Gordon.”

“They get any prints off it?” A pit was was forming in Albert’s stomach.

“Uh-uh, just mine.” She toyed with the bullet-shaped pendant at her throat, her gaze skimming the rearview mirror as they broke free of the bridge and pulled back into sunlight. “I didn’t know what it meant and Gordon wouldn’t tell me but… you know Gordon, you’d never want to play a hand of poker with him, right? Not for money anyways. Well… that slip of paper, it rattled him.”

Albert had seen Cole rattled exactly once since he started working for the man: when he’d dropped by the safe house while Albert was still in the midst of documenting the scene. Cole had worked in violent crimes for most of his career so it hadn’t been the blood, or Caroline Earle’s desecrated corpse still laid out on the living room floor where they’d found her. But something there had shaken Cole to speechlessness.

“Right after that he booked a flight to Spokane,” Diane continued. “So I went to the library. Didn’t think I’d get anywhere, but a friend of mine, she’s a librarian at Penn? Took one look and knew what it was, those letters and numbers. P to K4.”

It was familiar, but Albert was running on empty. “Okay, what’s it mean?”

Diane found her pack of cigarettes again and held it out to him. “Do me a favor, light me one of these, will you?”

“Diane--”

“I thought it was some kind of code, you know? But my friend, turns out she was in a bunch of tournaments as a kid, even made it to nationals. So she recognized it right away. Wasn’t a code at all, it was a type of notation.”

“ _Diane_ \--”

“Chess, Albert. It was a fucking chess move.”

Something in him hit the overload button and all he could do was sit there in Diane’s retro Beetle and hang on to the door as she took the exit onto Market with a reckless, sudden swerve like she’d forgotten the turn until the last moment.

“I changed my mind,” Diane said finally, holding the pack of cigarettes out to him again. “Light one of these for yourself instead. Looks like you need it.”

 

“DIANE, I NEED THOSE FILES FROM AGENT STEVENS A.S.A.P.” 

Gordon Cole’s voice echoed down the hallway long before he materialized in the flesh. Albert winced, bracing himself. Nine-thirty in the morning was always too early for Gordon’s brand of aural assault, but nine-thirty in the morning after a night spent dozing with another passenger’s seat reclined so far it was in his lap was something else entirely.

After the rush to get him back here, Albert had arrived to an empty office, no Cole in sight. So after Diane disappeared into her own office he’d taken the opportunity to duck his head under the sink in the men’s room and change into the spare suit he kept around for emergencies before hunting down a fresh cup of coffee. He’d settled at his desk and had just started a much needed caffeination ritual when Gordon’s flat shout announced his arrival.

“THAT COURIER I TOLD YOU ABOUT SHOULD BE HERE ANY MINUTE NOW, DIANE, AND I NEED TO YOU BRING THOSE FILES UP TO ME STRAIGHT AWAY. MY EYES ONLY.”

Gordon stopped short in the office doorway, a double take of surprise crossing his face when he caught sight of Albert, like he’d forgotten he’d ordered him back on that godforsaken redeye. “Oh, hello, Albert.” 

Diane nearly ran smack into their boss but side-stepped at the last minute, locking onto Albert over his shoulder, something fierce and brittle in the set of her jaw.

“Gordon,” she said, eyes still on Albert. “You need to listen to me.”

“I HEARD YOU LOUD AND CLEAR,” Gordon said, then half-turned to face her. “I need to talk to Albert here and you need to meet the courier for me. It’s very important.” Diane lingered in the doorway for a moment more and Gordon’s face softened. “I heard you, Diane. It’s under control.”

“You might have heard me but I don’t think you _listened_.” With that, Diane vanished, leaving Gordon shaking his head.

“What was that all about?” Albert said as Gordon crossed to his own desk, flustered in a way Albert couldn’t quite pin down. His expression was as unreadable as ever, but there was something agitated about his energy. Energy? Albert rolled his eyes. He’d been spending too much time with Cooper. “WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT,” Albert repeated when Gordon ignored him. 

Gordon pulled out his chair and fiddled with it, adjusting the height like he wasn’t the only one to sit in the thing every day. Albert had a pretty good idea what Diane had been saying but Gordon was doing his routine where you couldn’t tell whether he legitimately hadn’t heard you or was avoiding a response. It happened more than was probably professional, but it wasn’t like you could call him on it. Gordon had his own rhythm and you just had to wait him out.

Apparently done with whatever mysterious ailment had befallen his chair, Gordon took a seat and faced Albert. “ALBERT, GOOD TO SEE YOU. WHY DON’T YOU COME ON OVER HERE SO WE CAN TALK.”

Their desks were within easy speaking distance but this was a signal Gordon didn’t want to be accidentally overheard. Not that anyone else was around in the office that morning, as far as Albert had been able to tell. But he did as requested and took the chair on the other side of Gordon’s desk. 

“How was the flight?” Gordon asked. 

Albert stared at him. “Cramped. Gordon, we need to talk--”

“We’ve got two bits of trouble brewing on the horizon and I just caught wind of a third. As much as I might wish otherwise the third is out of our hands for now, so let me bring you up to speed on the first two matters of business.”

Albert tried to listen as Cole rattled off details of an extortion case that had turned to murder. The mess had only fallen into their laps because it had implicated a Senator’s chief of staff, and he fidgeted in his chair while Cole went into excruciating detail about the pressure he was getting from Washington to make the problem go away. 

“So I told them if they didn’t want this kind of problem, maybe the Senator should have scrutinized his staff a little closer.”

“Uh-huh.” Albert rapped his knuckles on Cole’s desk. “You dragged me back here to smooth the feathers of some Washington bigwig?”

“Got you scheduled to take a look at the stiff this afternoon.”

“Gordon--”

Cole held up a hand. “Washington wants my best pathologist and that’s you.”

Great. A high pressure autopsy on top of no sleep was his favorite way to work. “You couldn’t have given this one to Sam?”

Gordon tapped a pile of folders with one finger. “Did you hear me when I said they want my best?”

Albert supposed that was meant to be flattering. He searched through the muddled mess that was his brain for any kind of protest that would hold water with his boss. “Sam’s perfectly capable--”

“He’s not my best. And Sam’s out in the field.” 

Right. And technically, the case Albert had been in the field for had closed, abruptly, when Palmer did himself in. Freeing Albert up for this fool’s errand. 

“Look, I realize you’re getting shit from the brass, but it couldn’t have waited another day? The corpse isn’t gonna get any deader.”

Gordon sat back in his chair and gave Albert his full attention for the first time. “Alright Albert, why don’t you tell me what has you so wound up.”

“I’m not--”

“You just tried to pass off a high profile autopsy to Sam Stanley.” Gordon seemed find that more amusing than Albert thought was appropriate. 

But maybe he had a point. “The Palmer case.”

Gordon nodded, like he’d expected it. “Case closed, from what I understand.” 

Palmer lying weeping and bloody in Cooper’s lap as water poured over them all like some kind of absurd purification. Cooper’s face turned up to Albert, wordless and stricken; but even as Hill ran for an ambulance Albert had known there wasn’t anything to be done. He’d seen enough death to recognize its immanent approach.

Case closed.

“Sure, we got a confession, such as it was,” Albert said. “And then the suspect saved the taxpayers a messy trial by bashing his own skull in.”

“I’m not sure I see the problem here, Albert.” Gordon leaned back in his chair, expression shuttered. “Cooper faxed me his preliminary report this morning.”

This morning? It was barely dawn on the west coast. “That’s just it. When I got there to look at the Ferguson girl he’d already been up for days, and now he’s sending you reports at oh-dark-thirty even after the goddamn case is over and done?”

Gordon steepled his hands. “Sometimes it can be tough to let a case go. You know that as well as anyone.”

His ridiculously obvious dream from the other day came back to him then. What was it the sheriff had said, about Cassandra? 

“A little insomnia, okay sure, but this thing with Palmer... I didn’t catch it until we were going over the interviews afterwards, but Cooper…” Albert hesitated. “He blanked out during the interrogation.”

“Case of this type, it gets intense,” Gordon said. “Adrenaline gets to pumping, we miss things. Which is why I like to have two agents present for that kind of moment if I can.”

You need to listen to me, Diane had said to Gordon. Maybe if he called her in here the two of them could force him out of his easy deflections. 

“You’re not getting it. Palmer knew about Pittsburgh. God help me, I have no idea how, but he knew and he threw it in Coop’s face.” Albert stumbled to a halt, at a loss for how to convey what he needed to without lumping Coop in with Earle, completely sans marbles. “And when it happened it was like he wasn’t fully conscious. He had no memory at all of what Palmer said to him and his version of events in the interrogation room afterwards was… scrambled.”

Cole didn’t seem surprised and that lack of surprise just flustered Albert more. 

“You were there in Pittsburgh,” Gordon said. “It was a bad scene; sometimes the mind protects itself. Did it interfere with his ability to do the job?”

There wasn’t anything he could say to that. “No. But Gordon--” 

“I’ll talk to him when he gets back.”

“And Palmer?”

“Case closed, right? He’s dead.”

“Gordon, he _knew about Pittsburgh_.” As he said the words the jagged pieces that had been floating around in his head since the interrogation finally clicked into place. _Fuck_. “We had evidence there was more than one unsub at the scene that night, but other than Earle, we never--”

“What about the entity, this BOB?”

What? Albert felt as if he’d run smack into a wall, face first. “If he even really exists--”

“I thought there were witness descriptions?”

Where was Gordon going with this? “Ronette Pulaski put him at the train car where Palmer killed his daughter. But the other witnesses only claimed to see the guy in their dreams.”

“Including Cooper.”

How much had Coop told Cole, and how much was guess work? Just how preliminary had that report been?

“Including Cooper,” Albert agreed. “After Teresa Banks, he sat right here at his desk and described the Palmer girl to me and told me she was going to be next. And it wasn’t a dream, it was like he was _seeing_ her.” 

Gordon nodded, an edge of impatience showing through his smooth facade. 

Albert thought about what Truman had said to him on the way to the hospital. About knowing, and not being able to do anything about it. “The sheriff thinks he knew about Maddy Ferguson the night before her body was found.”

“Coop’s a gifted investigator,” Gordon said, as if that covered anything under discussion. The way nothing he’d said seemed to leave a mark on his boss unsettled him. “What aren’t you telling me, Albert?”

_He’s killing my mother._

Gordon sat back, waiting him out. 

Okay. Alright. Albert had been avoiding this, and he knew it. Gordon might hold his cards close to his chest on a good day, but he’d always had their backs. After Chet Desmond disappeared Gordon had checked in with Cooper every two hours while Coop followed up in Deer Meadow. As far as Albert had been able to tell, Gordon hadn’t left his desk until Cooper got back to Philadelphia. And he’d gone to bat for Cooper after Pittsburgh.

“He... had a reaction. When we were debriefing the locals on Palmer’s interrogation.” Despite knowing he needed to do this, telling Gordon about it without Cooper’s knowledge felt like a betrayal of some kind. “An asthma attack. Landed him in the ER for the night. I take it he didn’t mention any of this to you?”

Gordon shook his head and for the the first time that bland veneer seemed to erode just a little, revealing a hint of something else beneath the surface. He leaned forward, a line deepening between his brows. “This was after the spirit -- BOB -- left Palmer?”

What? “Yeah--”

“How long afterward?” Gordon was watching him with an intensity that made Albert shift in his chair. 

“A couple hours, I guess.”

“Did Coop say anything about BOB during the attack?”

Albert stared at him. Gordon nodded like that was an answer.

“The attending physician in Twin Peaks thinks the asthma was triggered by exhaustion, and from what I saw exhaustion is an understatement.” Albert continued, clinging to the concrete facts, too relieved that Gordon hadn’t pressed him on what Cooper had said to consider why. “I thought it was just the case -- but then this morning Diane told me about the chess deal.”

Gordon crossed his arms over his chest, distant and unreadable again. 

Dammit. “First Earle slips his leash and now he’s sending Coop invitations to play some twisted game, and you just left him out there on his own?”

“Diane shouldn’t have jumped the gun with you this morning,” Gordon said with a frown. “It’s--”

“Under control?” Albert scoffed. “Seems to me last time we both gave Diane the brushoff things went off the rails, fast. Nearly permanently.”

“He’s not answering his phone,” Diane had said, her fingers tangled together as she hovered in the doorway to Albert’s apartment. “He’s not answering his phone and he won’t come to the door but he’s sending me tapes. He’s on leave and I don’t know if he’s even at home but he’s still sending me tapes, and--”

Gordon found a spot on the wall across the room engrossing like maybe he couldn’t meet Albert’s eyes just then and Albert wondered which memory was playing over his boss’s face, whether it was the same one he was trying his best to shove back into its lockbox.

“The safest place for him right now is out in Twin Peaks,” Gordon said after a long silence. There were bags under his eyes Albert hadn’t noticed before and the lines bracketing his mouth carved deeper than usual. “Earle’s message was sent to the office here in Philadelphia. He has no way of knowing Coop’s on the other side of the country, let alone where.”

Before Albert could muster a response to that bullshit, a voice rang out from the doorway. 

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Diane was hugging an oblong envelope to her chest, her mouth pressed in a thin line. She turned to Albert. “He fill you in on the mess with IA?”

“LET’S NOT BLOW THINGS OUT OF PROPORTION, WE’RE NOT QUITE TO THE MAYDAY POINT YET.”

“Internal affairs?” Albert echoed, lost.

Gordon made a face. “I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO ASK YOU HOW YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT, DIANE.”

“Don’t change the fucking subject, Gordon.” Diane snapped back.

Albert scrubbed his eyes with both hands, let them drop. “Is one of you going to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

Diane stalked the rest of the way into the office and dumped the package she was holding onto Gordon’s desk. “Roger Hardy is headed to Twin Peaks.”

“ _What?_ ” Albert nearly stood up out of his chair. Instead he gripped the armrests and turned back to Gordon. “Why?”

Diane’s expression had gone sour. “I knew I should have said something. Canada, right?”

Gordon’s jaw was set. “Diane, it’s out of our hands. Roger’s a good agent and any meddling will just make things worse.”

“Hardy is investigating _Cooper_?” Albert felt like he’d been dodging falling boulders for the last three days and one had finally landed a direct hit

“The third piece of trouble I told you about, Albert. Something about interference with a DEA investigation. I’ve got Agent Bryson looking into it.” Gordon turned back to Diane, patting the envelope she’d brought him. “Thank you, Diane. This is a very important matter I need to brief Albert on right away.”

Diane hovered for another beat, shooting Albert a look he couldn’t interpret, then turned on her heel and left the room. 

“Gordon--”

Gordon held up a hand. “The second bit of trouble is in this envelope. After you finish the autopsy this afternoon I need you to fly out to Springfield to take a look.”

“Springfield? As in Illinois?” What was this, some kind of errand so he’d stop pestering Gordon about Cooper? “Don’t you think we’ve got more urgent matters--”

Gordon slid the envelope towards him. “Just take a look at this file, Albert.”

Albert glared at him but did as he asked. The seal on the envelope had been broken already -- probably by Diane, the snoop -- but Gordon seemed to know what he’d find. Albert slid a pile of manila files out of the package and leafed through it in confusion. He was going to need a gallon more coffee if he was going to make sense of anything that had happened this morning, but the files in his hands took the cake, unless this was another one of Gordon’s forays into communicating in code. 

“So… the Springfield office got an anonymous package. I fail to see the big fucking deal.”

“Springfield thought they had a mail bomb on their hands.” Gordon prompted. “Keep reading.”

“So it wasn’t a bomb, it was a… veil. Okay.”

“A wedding veil. Look at the next file.”

Kansas City. Another fake mail bomb, this time sent to the local PD. This time the box had held a white silk garter. Albert glanced up at Gordon, the coffee gone acid in his stomach. “What is this?”

“More important than some crossed wires with Internal Affairs,” Gordon said. “The postal service ran down the credit card used to pay for delivery. The sender signed the receipts with his own name.”

Albert flipped to the third file, to a faxed copy of a credit card receipt from the USPS. And nearly dropped the pile of folders like they’d scorched him.

Gordon’s expression had drained of any trace of indifference, leaving behind lines of stark gravity. “I need you to make sure we know everything there is to know about those packages before Coop leaves Twin Peaks. Make damn sure the locals didn’t miss anything.”

Albert nodded, struck silent by the overly dramatic flourish of the signature on the blurry fax. 

The receipts for both the garter and the veil had been signed _Windom Earle_. 

Albert shook himself out of his slack-jawed stare at Earle’s ridiculous signature and turned back to the folders in his lap, flipping through the documents a second time. A white net veil and a white silk garter, nothing special about either item, but whatever bullshit Earle was trying to pull, he’d known it would get back to Cooper eventually. A veil and a garter, and Caroline had been Windom Earle’s wife. 

No way to tell whether the regalia had originally been the dead woman’s or picked up second hand by Earle for the symbolism, but either way, the intent was precisely aimed psychological warfare. And wasn’t it just like Earle to involve three different law enforcement agencies, knowing Gordon, knowing Cooper, knowing they wouldn’t be able to resist following that breadcrumb trail wherever Earle was leading.

“DIANE, WHY DON’T YOU COME BACK IN HERE NOW.”

Diane must have been hovering just outside the room this whole time, because her head popped around the corner of the doorframe before Gordon had gotten more than her name out. 

“COME ON OVER AND SIT DOWN WITH US FOR A MOMENT.”

Some of the stiff had gone out of Diane’s spine. Albert hadn’t noticed on the ride from the airport, but her bangs hung in her eyes in a less than severe line, like she hadn’t been keeping up with her cut. Maybe she’d overheard what Albert had told Gordon about Cooper’s breakdown, because the mask had cracked. She met Albert’s eye before moving away from the door, hesitant, as if asking his permission to join them. Very un-Diane. 

“PULL UP A CHAIR, DIANE.” It almost sounded like Gordon was trying to modulate his voice into something close to coaxing, which had to be a first.

Diane grabbed the chair from behind Cooper’s desk and wheeled it over next to Albert. 

“What’s on your mind?” Gordon said once Diane had settled into Cooper’s chair.

Diane bit her lip. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Gordon.” All the bravura from earlier had drained away, leaving behind a brittle intensity. 

Gordon shifted in his chair. “You’re worried.” 

Diane laughed. “It’s always an honor to watch a great detective at work.” 

Gordon sat back and considered them both for a long moment. “Now, I’m not going to tell you not to worry,” he said. “Either of you. But I am going to tell you that everything that can be done is being done. Albert here is going to Springfield, Illinois and then to Kansas City to follow up on those packages. I know that you have your ear to the ground, Diane, and I’m not going to ask you where you get your information, but I am going to ask you to keep me in the loop.”

Diane gave Gordon a small nod. 

“I’m monitoring the situation with Internal Affairs as best I can,” Gordon continued. “And I think you know I have my own sources of information.”

“Okay,” Diane said, picking at one of her fingernails. “Alright. But Gordon, it’s more than just IA and… and Earle and his bullshit mindgames.”

Whatever reassurance Gordon had been trying to radiate retreated behind that damnable blank inscrutability he’d mastered long before Albert started working for him.

“These cases, these… I know I’m not supposed to know anything about it, but I also know you know I do.” She didn’t say Blue Rose, not out loud. “But Chet Desmond never came back and now Dale--” Diane glanced sidelong at Albert. “The perp is dead but he’s still there, in that town. I just… I want to know what’s going on.”

“You know what’s going on, Diane,” Gordon said. “At this point you know just as much as Albert does.”

Diane’s eyes locked on Albert’s and he went cold. 

“Right,” Diane said. Her jaw squared and she smiled and Albert was glad it wasn’t aimed at him. “Just as much as Albert.”

Gordon reached over and took one of Diane’s hands in his own and she glanced up at him, startled out of her glare. “What happened with Chet… it’s not going to happen again. I give you my word.”

Diane didn’t pull away, which surprised Albert, and then her whole posture softened, which surprised Albert even more. “What about Earle?” she asked. 

Gordon squeezed her hand and let her go. “You let me and Albert worry about Windom Earle.”

There’d be more breadcrumbs. Two pieces of a wedding trousseau, two different cities, it screamed the start to something more. The only comfort Albert could find was the knowledge that they’d had Caroline Earle cremated, that Earle wouldn’t be able to dig up anything grisly to drop in Cooper’s lap when mere accessories lost his interest. 

“He’ll slip up,” Albert said with more confidence than he felt. He wasn’t sure who he was trying harder to convince, himself or Diane.

Gordon nodded. “Earle gets fixated,” he said. “Doesn’t keep his eye on the big picture, never did. Internal Affairs will keep Coop busy in Twin Peaks for at least a couple of days. I know it looks bad, but it might just buy us some time we need right now, and they’ll be keeping a close eye on him for us too.”

Albert let Gordon’s reasoning reinforce some of the cracks in his conviction. It wasn’t just that Earle wouldn’t know to look for Coop in Twin Peaks, it was that keeping Cooper away from Philly also kept him out of Earle’s newest line of attack a little longer. Long enough maybe for Earle to make a mistake. Long enough maybe to get to him before he got to Cooper. Before any of this got to Cooper.

“I just can’t stop thinking about how if I’d told you, if I’d told you about the Horne girl and Canada before this…” Diane folded her hands in her lap. For the first time since he’d met her Albert wondered how old Diane really was. Right now she looked like a kid who’d dressed up for a play only to find it had sprung to life around her. Through the looking glass, through the wardrobe into Narnia, the snow crunching under her feet. 

Blue Rose cases had a way of doing that to you. 

“Diane, you stop that. Hindsight might be 20/20 but guilt just muddies the water. If Coop catches wind of any of this we both know he’s not going to be thinking clearly so we’re going to need to be crystal clear about it ourselves, you hear me?”

Diane straightened, lifting her chin. “I hear you,” she said.

“Albert?” Gordon turned to him. “You absolutely clear?”

Not in the slightest. “Give me a couple more cups of coffee before you ask me to be clear on anything,” he said, but he nodded just the same.

He’d go to Springfield, and he’d go to Kansas City, and he’d go wherever Earle’s dart hit next on the map, and he’d find something, anything, to nail that beast before he hurt anyone else again. Before he took another bite. 

Cooper might be teetering on the edge in Twin Peaks, but hell if Albert was going to let Windom fucking Earle be the one to push him over the rim.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: brief mentions of past suicidal ideation, ableist language about mental illness, dissociation, hallucination, possible medical triggers, panic attack, brief violent imagery no more graphic than the show.
> 
> Sections in italics use dialog either from the script for Arbitrary Law or from the episode as aired.


End file.
